Are you talking about your own 4th Step here? Could you maybe give a little more info about what you and/or your sponsor has been doing to give you the impression that your character defects were going to be removed by doing the 4th Step....I mean, because, personally, I've never really heard anyone say before that she/he thought that that was what the 4th Step was about and it seems like maybe you've gotten a bit ahead of yourself with your expectations here.
For me, 4th Step and 5th Step focus was/is more on identifying and sharing "my stuff" than on getting rid of it, although the 5th Step does to some extent take some of the power, especially its power to cause fear, out of it.......The getting rid of it part comes with Steps 6-9 for me...and sometimes it takes a long time, goes in fits and starts, or seems to go and then pops back up if/when I'm emotionally triggered in a related way. The things that take the longest, are the hardest to get rid of, and that tend to re-appear most easily and most often are that ones that are most closely related to my core woundings and the patterns/choices/behaviors associated with those.
The good thing is, the longer I'm in program and the more I work the Steps, the more I realize that, each time I deal with this stuff, it's on a "higher," more sophisticated level, and I get through it / over it more quickly. My best guess is that core-wounding related stuff never goes away entirely, and those will always be my areas of greatest challenge....but they are also my greatest opportunities for growth.
freya