I went out for walk and I think I came upon a solution similar to what your taking about! So the Folders! They also show up in the list of layers that you can show/hide/no change for the states. I made folder called rightThumbNeutral, I put both the neutral poses in there. Now instead of hiding specific neutral thumbs for all those when-held states, I just hide the folder. Then as you suggested, I made permanent states for the buttons/stick, those will then show/hide the specific neutral thumb. Viola! Now I can hide the neutral thumb while also changing neutral thumb
Idk if the folders are actually necessary, but it helps for me to figure it out anyway. Thanks for helping me think through this!
right now, I'm using face buttons/dpad to switch from resting on stick to resting on buttons, and the just u on the sticks for the reverse, which suits most of my purposes. An "Any Axis" trigger would be appreciated though