I know this is an old thread, but i had a similar experience years ago. Barre chords are like a right of passage and a significant milestone. I can remember bragging that i could do barre chords back high school. It was realy hard at first. I made the mistake of putting steel strings on my beginner acoustic guitar. Talk about setting yourself up for failure. I didn't realize my mistake until i got an electric and found it so much easier. You might try lighter guage strings, or maybe a different guitar. I've seen people whose index finger would curl down the neck starting out, but eventually was able to work it out and play barre chords. Guitarists also cheat all of the time :-). I can remember not being able to hit an open b7 chord fast enough for a song. So i cheated - i played an open d7 and only hit the d, g, b, and e strings. This was close enough and it worked (look at the chord shapes and you will see what i mean).

so, for a barre f (e on first fret), try not barring the entire fret, but just the b and e strings along with the e shape. For a Cm, try not barring the whole third fret, but fust fret the e string along with the Am shape. in both cases, only strum the strings you are fretting. These may not be full barre chords but most of the time will be good enough.