why has my Mac been crashing lately

+1 Please post your EtreCheck report, without it all we can do is guess what your issue is.

By the way if you have any third party AntiVirus apps, cleaning app, security apps, VPN apps installed there is an EXCELLENT chance that is the problem.

Hi there...

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

EtreCheck + answers. Post the report so those of us who have evaluated thousands of such reports can look for things you may not see as significant.