At what point does a cliche become unbearable?

I just had my dad recently read one of my chapters and he took issue with some of the vocabulary I used, marking it as cliche. The words/phrases I used were 'gut-wrenching' and 'knee-high.' Now i perfectly understand avoiding cliches to make writing more flavorful, but at the same time... this is just how people talk irl. I didnt even know these words *were* cliches, i just thought they were regular words, and they (most importantly) fit with my characters' vocabulary. Its not like i was sitting there and pretending my characters invented those terms or were 200iq for using them. What makes a word cliche in the first place? Isnt it just a function of that word's usage over time? What about non-linguistic cliches?

Like for example: love is a very widely used, almost universal motivator for most humans. a lot of people spend great effort irl trying to find, preserve, or protect love. I dont bat a single eye lid when a character's primary motivation is love, in fact, im usually surprised when it isn't. Its basically a default motivation.

On the other hand, i roll my eyes every time a character's motivation is to get stronger, or when a story's main premise is "humans vs monsters that can/are ____." But plenty of excellent, relatively newer stories have one or both of these tropes (Frieren, Invincible, Solo Leveling, to name 0.03% of them). And i picked these three series to show that these tropes emerge across nations and cultures (Frieren being Japanese, Solo Leveling being Korean, and Invincible being American (iirc)). So are the 'i need more power'/'humans vs monsters' tropes cliches? Are they 'unbearable?' or are they just a default option now? Or maybe completely different factors play into whether or not a cliche is palatable/executed well or not.

I also saw someone say that basically every character trope/archetype has already been written, which makes me wonder if that may have an effect on how cliches are perceived.

Also, also, (and this might just be a skill issue on my part) whenever I try to circumvent a 'cliche' term, I'm usually only left with the raw definition of the term, which i think is generally a clunkier, more boring way to write.