Nick, when you find yourself in a UA, you know something went wrong. What were you doing prior to the UA entry? Might be that whatever you were using was what got you into trouble. Then again, maybe it wasn't. In the recovery you have to use everything at your disposal, but you might not be able to trust any of it.
That's what I did. I trusted the stick force. Why? During the numerous UA recoveries I did prior to that the stick force worked. Without fully realizing it, I learned to trust the stick force to help find a stable flight regime. Had I not trusted it, I still would have made reference to it but been more diligent in observing other clues during the recovery.
The situation I was in was fairly compounded. Partial panel so I already was without some attitude indication, runaway trim, so I had that to deal with, then a simulated UA that led to the real thing. Oh yeah, I had less than 100hours total time and Terminal was trying to contact us on guard because they vectored us into the Snowbird's training area, then cancelled our IF clearance and switched us to a traffic frequency. A little bit busy.
I wasn't advocating letting go of the stick. I say fly her to the ground. What I do advocate is, if able, leaving a trimmed position that you can feel while hands on flying. Try it...it works.