愁眉苦脸 (chóuméikǔliǎn) = a worried, troubled expression (literally 'worry brows, bitter face'). Very common idiom.
culture
愁 appears frequently in classical Chinese poetry to express melancholy and longing. Li Qingzhao's famous line: 只恐双溪舴艋舟，载不动许多愁 (I fear the small boat cannot carry so much sorrow).
Bottom heart radical — the indexing radical. Anchors 愁 in the family of emotion words. Autumn pressing on the heart = autumnal sorrow, the cooling-season melancholy. A textbook compositional metaphor for inner mood.
Top 秋 supplies the sound (qiū → chóu, related rime in the q/ch onset family) and a powerful semantic resonance: autumn is the season of falling leaves and quiet melancholy. Autumn over heart is one of the most poetic decompositions in the script.
