Psychology says quietly unhappy people talk in a recognizable pattern — “at least,” “could be worse,” “I can’t complain” — and each phrase does the same job: it ends the topic before the conversation gets honest enough to require something of them

I can't complain keeps all of that from happening. It acknowledges the feeling and retires it in the same breath. No one worries. No one follows up. You've told the truth and hidden from it simultaneously.

Dana Jack, a psychologist at Western Washington University who spent decades studying this pattern, called it self-silencing: the tendency to suppress what you feel in order to preserve harmony, avoid conflict, or avoid becoming someone else's problem.

Her research found that people who chronically silence themselves show higher rates of depressive symptoms and lower self-worth.