[DesertTwang]

Sounds like a possible case of "death grip" to me. I've been there (still am in some respect), and am making an effort to rectify this. If fingering a barre chord requires enough force to bend the guitar neck, I'd be very careful, because I see a strain injury on the horizon, like tennis elbow. I'm dealing with the beginning stages of that now, which has caused me to re-evaluate my technique. A simple test that worked well for me is this: Play your guitar and finger a barre chord. Then, without changing anything, let go of the guitar with your fretting hand. The guitar should not move at all. When I used to do this, the guitar would swing outward, the neck moving away from me. The reason, I figured out, was that I have a tendency to clutch the guitar body too strongly with my right (picking) arm, which in turn caused me to grip the neck with my fretting hand, to keep the guitar in place. Mind you, I was doing this without being aware. I thought I was holding the guitar nice and relaxed, but as soon as my left hand let go of the neck, away it went. It took me a surprising amount of effort, awareness and posture evaluation to stop doing this. As a result, I now require much less finger pressure in my fretting hand. Also, sometimes a poorly set up guitar can cause you to press much harder on the strings than you should. Might want to check on your string action, too.
Good luck!