A-well! At first, it was rather like… I don't suppose you've ever been so dreadfully uncomfortable in your own body that you'd sooner cut it to pieces than inhabit it a minute longer, but taking a human form for the first time was very much like that. My lack of wings and tail for balance, my growing horns gone (permanently, I worried), my claws reduced to mere nails that would crack and break under any strenuous scratching of any variety… It was a nightmare, you understand, made worse by the teasing and patronisation that came with having such a diminutive form, let alone one with such mismatched features. I was in a child's body, very definitely that of a little girl, and my scales were still very much evident in my face and hands. Only my low centre of gravity saved my rapidly shifted sense of balance.
My talents grew quickly. They don't call me a prodigy for nothing, you know. Within a month, I was acquainted enough with the process to have begun altering it. I developed an adult form to match my mind, more visibly masculine the same way (although at the time I still had very little idea of the absurd weight you mortals put on genitalia as a determination of gender). I grew better at hiding my draconic features - something that would come in handy should I ever have to pass unnoticed as a mortal, as Fahrad seemed so oddly insistent that I would need to do one day - and I grew more comfortable with naming my humanoid form as belonging to me.
I took this humanoid form and I conquered it. I made it conform to my will and I made it mine. My piercings, what few tattoos I possess, any scars I chose to allow to linger - all to the same end. It says: "this is mine". And I will have no words with anyone who seeks to control it - just like the rest of me.
I would hardly say shapeshifting is as natural to me these days as breathing, but it's certainly a more comfortable affair. I still need to concentrate on it, of course, I'm not an ancient drake like my mother - but it's more like changing one's state of mind between personas than entirely changing my essence against my will, as it felt the first time.