Question, is the silent treatment really that bad?

Something my mother (56 yrs old) has always done from the time that I was a kid to now (Im 20 yrs old) is give the silent treatment whenever she is upset with anyone and everyone in the family, no matter how big or small the "transgression" against her may be.

Not going into to details, but my mother and I had an argument today and she is doing what she usually does which is not talking to me. In return I am doing the same. Sometimes what she'll do is come screaming at me after hours of not talking about how am I a disrespectful bastard or that my father is to blame for my behavior, or that I no longer have to worry about her because she is "done" and "I no longer have a mother". Trust me when I say that these two things are minuscule compared to some of the other shit she has said to me, but I digress.

This got me thinking why does she do this? How big of a problem is this? She has does this for so long that I never recognized that it could be a problem until now. I didn't start giving her the silent treatment until recently. Is this a result her doing it to me for so long?