Due to work and life stress, I feel like I am slowly developing some sort of a mental illness.

I've always been a very mentally strong person.  I experience lot of deaths of family member (illness, natural causes. nothing dramatic like crime, accident etc), financial issues, mentally exhausting people and situations, etc but never once felt depressed or overly stressed about it until now.  I've always been good about looking on the bright side, and focusing on the positive.

I don't know if I finally reached my tolerance capacity or whether it's covid and all the things that came with it  that has added to my level of stress but I have, for the first time, felt what might be an anxiety attack last weekend and again, now.

I try not to give in to the feeling of anxiety because I feel like once I succumb to a full blown attack, it may never go away.  Prevention is key?

What are some of the things I can do to prevent this? Meditation? Exercise?  Something spiritual like church?  Because of covid, it's hard to go out and meet new people or go and do something overly active. I am currently on reddit and writing this to primarily  keep my mind off what feels like an impending anxiety attack. Not sure if it's working but it is keeping my focused on something.