Having spent all morning mustering up the courage to leave his home, William Hale opened his front door and took a few steps outside.
The sun and fresh air felt nice on his skin. But he was suddenly hit by a sense of crippling anxiety – one that would leave him questioning every single person who walked by.
“Did they cough as they walked past me?” he asked himself. “Did I trip them up?”
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The intrusive thoughts were exhausting. Suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), William had an intense fear of harming other people. The irrational phobia made it nearly impossible for him to live a normal life.
The 24-year-old was also terrified of contamination, constantly having to sooth his cracked skin from washing his hands 150 times a day.
His other relentless rituals, including tapping and checking his surroundings, grew so severe he had to drop out of education at 16 and become housebound.
“I could never satisfy the OCD no mater how many times I washed my hands,” William, from Wilmslow, told the Manchester Evening News.
“It was all totally irrational and anyone with OCD knows that it’s irrational – but it’s near impossible to control.”
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that affects people of all ages and occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions.
Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings. Compulsions are behaviors an individual engages in to attempt to get rid of the obsessions and/or decrease distress.
Although many people experience minor obsessions (such as worrying about leaving the gas on, or if the door is locked) and compulsions (such as avoiding the cracks in the pavement), these don't significantly interfere with daily life or are short-lived.
However, for those with OCD, it's likely the obsessions and compulsions will have a big impact on how they live their lives.
Out of education and stuck at home, William used his spare time to learn how to code, which is the method of giving a computer instructions to perform a specific task.
He then used his skills to stat his first business, designing websites for other companies.
By 2020, business was booming, and William had managed to over come his debilitating OCD battle.
But then the pandemic hit – and like so many others, his mental health started to spiral. By the end of the year, he’d already tried to take his own life twice.
“Losing control of my mental health for a second time destroyed me,” William added, “I was desperately trying to keep a positive front so customers at my web design business wouldn’t notice anything was up.
“But waking up with depression every day was exhausting, and I started to give up. It was a feeling of just wanting to stay asleep rather than experience another day of zero emotion.”
As the country went into lockdown, William’s web business was put on pause, like almost all businesses at the time.
However, as someone with previous poor mental health, William found the isolation and total change to his business completely overwhelming – triggering a whole host of breakdowns and crises.
“My web design business was a massive distraction from OCD once it started growing,” he added.
“But I think when the pandemic hit and my business was put on pause, the depression was inevitable as the distraction was no longer there and I started slipping backwards.
William was diagnosed with clinical depression as his mental state continued to decline. “Funnily enough, until I was diagnosed with it, I never really understood what depression was and I naively thought it just implied that someone was lazy. How wrong was I?,” he said.
“Pre-2020, I was living a life of go-go-go and never really letting anything get me down, but depression felt like every ounce of pleasure had been removed from every living second.
“I have always been obsessed with music, but not long after the depression came about, I couldn’t even listen to my lifelong favourite songs as the music became sensitive and the depression seemed to make even listening to music difficult.
“There wasn’t a single spark of happiness inside me when I tried to listen to the music.
“Looking back at that very dark time, I’m ashamed about what happened. I’ve never really been a down-in-the-dumps sort of person, but memories of those months where I was in and out of the hospital are unbearable.
“When everyone was struggling with Covid and I was set on ending my life, it seems selfish looking back at it now.”
After months of medication adjustments and intensive psychological help, William decided to start a project that he could run from home with his partner. "I needed to find something to keep myself occupied with,” he added. “Not having anything to focus on and create a distraction held me back.”
Scrolling on TikTok one day, William stumbled upon a user selling retro sweets on their account – so he decided he would do the same.
He ordered £1,000 worth of popular pick and mix sweets and set up his own website in the hope that his side project would take off.
Incredibly, it’s now six-figure business that receives 5,000 orders a month, employs a growing team and operates from a swanky warehouse in Manchester.
Since starting the business in 2021, William has bought out a number of his pick and mix competitors, bringing them under his main brand, PickandMix.com.
The 24-year-old has already smashed huge milestones, with his business hitting a half-million-pound turnover this year.
“I refuse to go backwards now I’ve built a life to be proud of,” he said. “Almost all the tips and tricks I was given didn’t work and changing medication numerous times messed around with my head. But the one thing that helped me when I felt like I was living detached from the outside world was to focus on a project.
“For me, it had to be something that required constant attention and, ultimately, something that distracted me every day.
“It doesn’t have to be a business; that’s just my passion. Anyone can find new distractions and projects to be passionate about; never give up searching for your next passion project; it might just be the thing that saves your life for the better.
“It can be really hard, and living each day felt like such a challenge, but once I stopped fixating on how much depression was impacting my life and instead focused on only the things that are important to me, blocking out everything external that I had no control over, I started to pick myself back up again, piece by piece.”
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