stress , more than a concept, a measurable entity

I am an engineer.  I like to quantify things,  but engineering is more than calculating things, for me it is about understanding the property of things and how they behave.  Part of my disconnection from myself was my disconnection from my abilities and skills also.  I have always considered natural materials as having desires, especially water, for example you always need to ask the question is that what the river wants to do , when you are trying to divert it.  you need to make it happy in its new position for it to want to stay there.  This of course I blame on the herbie movies and too much family influence on the desire of machines to be well.  In order to fix something you need to understand how it wants to be in its natural state, very zen.  My favourite author's mechanic character. Mr. JLK matakone is written very much in the style of someone what has a feeling for cars.  Unfortunately they do not teach us how materials feel in college instead it is all about formulas and suchlike.  the people who developed the formulas are the ones who want to know how to quantify the personality ie the property of the material.  I was fortunate in my early career to work with a slightly odd, but brilliant engineer, who had a great feeling for how soils want to behave.  He was amused by my interest and got me to do lots of the labrourous calculations on his favourite subject, back analysis of soils slips.  He was trying to understand future behavior based on existing failures and trying to find a formula that would allow engineers to cut slopes into materials and built embankments at their optimum angle , potentially saving money and slope failure.  Sometime I will get to the point here.  I attended an  occupational health doctor last week and he was very impressed by my GPs diagnosis of my episode, adjustment reaction.  He explained that most doctors put down stress but that as stress is a concept you cannot suffer from a concept.  I have analysed how I ended up in this state and concluded that I can only deal with 4.5 very stressful occurrences at any one time.  Stress is a measurable thing and rather than go into a very long argunemtn with the man who was hopefully going to declare me fit for my job again I gave him my OK I will not argue with you look of confusion.  He then said of course you would think like that you are an engineer.  It was not an insult but rather a comment on how my mind works.  I have always been annoyed by peoples labelling of me as I am more than the sum of my parts.  I have many skills and interest and am  not just one thing, engineer is what I do not what I am .  Getting back to the point in hand stress is so much more than a concept in engineering.  It is essential that we know how things behave under stress so that structure  will not fail.  Today I started to read one of my favourite books, Structures, or Why things don't fall down .  I decided to look for a link between structural engineering and my limited knowledge of how the brain works.  Since my encounters with surgeons through my daughters illness i have long thought how similar engineering and surgery are, surgeons work on liging structure while engineers work on inanimate structures, both need to understand the material and organism they are working so that they can make it work properly.  So I am off to reconnect with my interest in my career, not the boring oul shite that drove me crazy, but the essence of why things are how they are, the fundamental philosophy of material, structures and machines.  I am off to look at how engineering concepts can be applied to mental health issues so that I can finally fully integrate my new life.