heedm,
Thanks for the explanation, I understand.
I have always taught to roll wings level, then pull up, using purely visual cues. One must learn to fight feelings, which in the slight cases we call the "leans" and in major cases can feel like you are housed inside a tornado. The trimmed stick recovery idea relies on the fact that you would use a perceived stick force to help you, but ignore all those other false forces from your body and inner ear. Neat trick, might work, but I put that into the same basket as the school that says every helicopter has LTE, and any hover descent can get you VRS. The "rules of thumb" that we get when we train are comforting and helpful, but somewhere along the line we learn when they can apply, and when to doubt them.
If the AFCS gives you good responses when you push against the stick, and you want to rely on that cue, have at it! Speaking for the S-76 design team (I helped design the AFCS and did much of the development flight test on both the SAS II, SAS III and Honeywell systems) we had no intention to use them as a wings leveler system, and would make no claim that they will help you. In fact, if formally asked, we probably would say that one should never rely on the AFCS as a UA escape tool, and that pushing against the trim will slightly degrade AFCS performance because it biases the actuators away from center and therefore slightly reduces stability peformance.
That being said, it is certainly not terrible to push against trim. There are many correct techniques in our world, have at it!