Originally Posted by: snojones

You should look at Faith 83's other entries on the subject, titled "A barre chord work around" and "Yea Me". You questions are answered in depth there

Ooh, I'm so glad my posts are helpful. Here it is again:

I played around with all the suggestions and some of my own, and the thing that works great is to set my other fingers down first before the barre -- the opposite of the "right" way, I suppose. Changing the sequence of how fingers are set onto the fret seems to change how the muscles flex and interact with each other and puts less strain on my wrist.

The other alteration that made a huge difference for me was NOT trying to twist my index finger so that the boney part was on the fret -- that alone was a big ouchy ouchy. Instead, I'm keeping the index finger straight with the fleshy part on the fret and instead of twisting it, sliding it further forward on the fret, so that the bottom edge of the fret rests against the very bottom of my finger where it meets the hand, and the tip of the index finger is hanging over the top edge unused. Scooting the index finger offsets the loss of the "boney part" advantage and adds the strength of the whole hand/arm to the mix.

Having figured these two small adjustments out, barre chords slid into place pretty quickly. Tone is good, though not perfect, but all six strings are more or less ringing out, and it's easy and quick to reach for. I'm back in the game.

Thank you, all, and next time I bitch and whine about not being able to do something, feel free to remind me of how wrong I was, LOL.

And the second one:

Yay me, because I just finished learning my first barre chord song, Back Home Again, which includes F#m and B, and a quick chord change between them in the bridge.

Sharing to offer encouragement -- it is possible to get this. For me, it required some breaking of rules (putting my barre finger down last was key) and then practicing with a song with barre chords in it that I love and ached to be able to play, and then playing along with one of John Denver's live album versions to learn it -- so that, yes, full confession -- I could pretend I was on stage backing him up, just for some extra spice.

Good motivation. Maybe someday I'll be good enough to play the guitar licks on Rocky Mountain High...

But for now, yay me and yay all of us for being on this crazy path.