Horst Galuschka | Picture Alliance | Getty Images"People say it when, really, what they mean is, 'I don't care," McWhorter, an author, linguist and associate professor at Columbia University, told Bill Gates' "Unconfuse Me""The first time someone said that to me was when something unpleasant had happened to me, and he didn't care. And he said, 'Well, it is what it is,'" McWhorter said.
Approximately 46.5 million U.S. adults say they have either one person or nobody that they can confide in for personal support, according to afrom The Impact Genome Project and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It's not entirely bad news for McWhorter's least-favorite phrase: Using it can be a sign of emotional resilience, because it shows your ability to accept your circumstances, psychologist Cortney Warren"The key to resilience is not denying reality or seeking out a reason that makes us feel better about why something happened," Warren said. "When we arrive at a place of radical acceptance, the situation has less power over us.