There are certainly areas where idiomatic Rust needs to fight against the borrow checker. If that wasn't the case, things like `ouroborous` and `pin_project` wouldn't be as widely used as they are.
I've never actually heard of that other crate. It looks like most of its downloads come from its direct/indirect dependents like glium. I'd say if you're writing self referential data structures you're not writing idiomatic Rust.