When you're first diagnosed with a chronic illness, it can be really scary. To hear the words "no cure", or "we can reduce severity and frequency but you'll likely always have the disease", is terrifying. Trying to understand and cope with such a dramatic change in one's life is pretty difficult. I could literally write a twenty page essay on mental health, coping, and chronic illness, but I won't. For now, I want to focus on what I consider to be the "best" tip for newly diagnosed chronic illness sufferers. After being diagnosed, the initial response is to discuss treatment methods. I think that it's really important that you try what your doctor suggests for a decent amount of time. If you don't give the treatment time to work, you'll end up wasting your time. Furthermore, while you are trying treatment methods, I have found that specifically, with migraines, keeping a diary is vital to treatment. Each migraine is completely different for each pathology, and each individual migraine has different triggers, pathology, and symptoms. For instance, when the sound C Sharp is played very loudly near me, I get migraine associated vertigo. The specific trigger for this migraine type also lends to specific migraine pathology and symptoms. For me, migraines triggered by the sound C sharp almost always result in ear ringing, eventual, fully reversible, and short lasting hearing impairment and deafness, and visual disturbances. Now, you're probably wondering, how did I figure this out? The answer is that I kept a "migraine diary". I tracked everything I did, and the exact symptoms of my migraines. This process took a while to narrow down exactly what was going on in my body. I have found, that once you figure out your triggers, you can then actively work to avoid them, and if you can't prevent them, knowing your symptoms and the most successful treatment methods for those symptoms, is extremely beneficial. So in conclusion, track your migraines. Track what you eat, the weather, weird smells, transportation methods and anything else you can think of. Then track the specific migraine symptoms and times they occurred. If you can figure out your triggers, and you can figure out the best treatment methods for specific symptoms, you'll be golden. Here's another example: After frequent doctor visits, and looking at my BP from those visits, I noticed that when my blood pressure was high, I was more likely to get a migraine. I started to track my BP every hour (a little excessive, I know), and I found that when the top number for my BP reached 120, I would get a migraine. I found this triggered every migraine type, not just one of my diagnosis. In response to this, I started on blood pressure medications, and they have worked beautifully. Now, I'm not saying that this will work for everyone, and definitely don't track your BP every hour if you don't have to, but tracking your daily events can really help. Try it out sometime :)